ANNO: Mutationem

Anno Mutationem is a 2D hack and slash with 3D exploration and some RPG elements. It has a strong cyberpunk anime aesthetic clearly inspired in Neon Genesis Evangelion and Ghost In the Shell even with some homages to them here and there. The game makes great use of 2D sprites over 3D backgrounds, the pixel art is gorgeous, the textures and color palettes used are very nice and the lighting and particle effects are great. It is a very good looking game. The music is great too specially during boss fights, as it is full of pumping electronic tracks enhancing the most epic moments. Character designs are hit-or-miss, main character is okay but the villains are just ridiculous and impossible to take seriously and the side-kick character is very annoying. The atmosphere in the cities is quite strong and well done though.

The game uses 3D for exploration and 2D for combat and platforming. Cities and open spaces are typically exploration sections in which NPCs, characters and some quests or puzzles can be found, and there is no combat or platforming during these 3D sections. The 2D parts typically take place on dungeons or in closed spaces like corridors, and the game seamlessly transitions between these two modes even inside the same location. Controls are snappy and responsive during combat, there are a few short-range weapons like swords, greatswords and double-edged swords, and long-range weapons like guns or rocket launchers. There aren't many weapons, most of them being very expensive and only a few of them could be found on the wild. Combat is quick and fun but enemies can be a bit spongy. Battles combining short-ranged and long-ranged enemies in an enclosed space require some thought and there is a number of different moves and epic finishers that can be executed. Money can be collected to purchase healing items, weapons and upgrades, but it is hard to come by and there aren't good places to farm for it (if any), the player can collect and sell junk but it doesn't yield much money. There is a bartender mini-game that yields money but only on the first playthrough (and I think it gets locked after completing all its levels?). Anyway, money is hard to get and at least in my experience it is best used in getting healing items as some bosses can be quite difficult and frustrating. Healing items take a while to take effect, which increases the difficulty.

Being an RPG-like game there are some cities that can be explored plot-wise and revisited mostly at will to complete some quests, the few of them that are present in the game anyway. Most of these quests suck, devolving into fetch quests or just going from point A to point B, or being so obtuse that there is almost no sensible clue about how to solve them, like the elevator puzzle. There are good quests though that makes you pay attention and gather clues through observation but there aren't many of them. There are dungeon stages that comprise the most of the enemies and bosses of the game, with most of the latter having quite cool (but hard) battles. These dungeons are mostly underground and have a lot of corridors, and some puzzles about doors, moving platforms or levers. In terms of platforming the level design is good (with the occasional frustrating section like the red lasers) and there is some backtracking to do but overall the dungeons are a little dull in contrast to the beautiful and colorful open spaces of the cities. The last dungeon in particular drags for far too long, it is annoying to traverse and cointains huge exposition dumps that are not fun (more on that later). It also contains surprise bosses and sudden difficulty spikes. The game is fairly linear, there aren't many cities and they are quite small, so there is not a huge amount to things to do here. That's a shame because I think that was the best part of the game and I wish there were more urban stages as the dungeons take the most part of the runtime.

In terms of character progression there isn't a traditional leveling system. Instead the game features a tech-tree that can be unlocked using two different kinds of EXP points. Blue points are acquired by defeating enemies (I'm not sure if these can be farmed as enemies seldom respawn) and are used to acquire more combos for the weapons, improve the speed of shots and things like that. Red points are obtained during special story moments and are used to increase stats like health, defense or offense and such. Special traversal abilities like double jump or wall climbing are acquired story-wise at no cost. There is not enough EXP to unlock the whole tree (and I don't think grinding is viable) so skills to upgrade must be chosen carefully. Weapons can be customized with chips giving them elemental damage and such but these chips are hard to come by and very expensive to purchase, also I'm not sure about what kind of enemies are susceptible to what kind of elemental damage, but chips can be swapped between weapons so there is some experimentation to do for the players willing to do it. Hacking is an integral part of the game too as some doors must be hacked in order to gain further access, via a timing-based minigame,and hacking abilities can be improved in the tech-tree by using blue EXP in order to ease these puzzles and provide more rewards like money and EXP. There is also a fishing mini-game too, and a DLC that includes a top-down shooter dungeon-crawler mini-game based on the side-kick.

The story is about a woman that is part of a private security company or something that is looking for her missing brother, which will lead to the uncovering of some conspiracies. Honestly the story easily the weakest part of the game, it is a complete mess, it barely makes sense and it is very hard to follow due to the amount of characters and the little information we have about them. The futuristic world is explained very slowly, with big concepts like complete mechanization of living beings, parallel universes or psychic/magical powers being introduced suddenly without any explanation whatsoever, and characters coming and going out of nowhere. The dialog is terrible, characters talk in a weird and mysterious way alluding to unexplained events, almost nobody identify themselves on introduction, and there are numerous translation, spelling and grammar errors in the script. There are also weird bits of anime-like humor that clash horribly with the more serious moments of the game, the tone can change from one scene to the next without notice, and in my opinion very few of the jokes land. The worse offense in my opinion are the HUGE exposition dumps in the last part of the game, delivered by the overused and dumb trope of the censored files that the player has to find and read, having key parts of them blackened out like if they were classified reports. The game does this a lot in the final dungeon, it makes harder to understand what is going on as there are big revelations near the end, it gets tiresome quickly and it was completely unnecessary.

Despite all the negatives I mentioned I do recommend this game because it is quite fun and it looks and sounds great. I liked the 2D-3D transitions a lot and I hope more action games take that route and provide rich areas to explore. There is an interesting world here that in my opinion it needs to be unfolded and explained in a better way, but it just looks like a bunch of cool concepts mashed up and rushed out. It fell short on many of my expectations but I want to judge it for what is instead of what it isn't, and it isn't a bad game at all. I don't think there is much replay value though unless you're really invested in the story or the sidequests, or if you want to try out other weapons and combos. I can't recommend Anno Mutationem for its story, but I can recommend it for everything else.

Plot: acceptable.
Translation errors: sometimes make the situation in the plot funny.
Content filling: secondary content is evenly distributed as the plot progresses.
Gameplay: throughout the game, there were no questions about the controls and interaction with the in-game world.
Possible disadvantages:
Not all languages ​​have the correct translation.
Among the bugs, I was unlucky to encounter a map that sometimes disappeared, which was fixed by opening and closing it completely, and markers for secondary tasks could simply disappear (careful reading of the task description may help).
Verdict: I recommend
The game is good, but unfortunately too short. Of course, I would like more.
But for those who are ready to go through all the same, there is NG+

One of my favs. If you like side scrolling fighting with story, upgrades, crafting, and cyberpunk theme to boot.

I'd divide the game into two parts:
The first part is kind of slice-of-life game set in this beautiful Cyberpunk world. You got 3 cities and some more rural areas and dungeons to explore. Of course being a small budget indie game you're not getting full open-world cities, but the game does a good job at making the cities feel big and lived-in. They all have their own character and visual style. There's also lots of side quests to do: bartending, solving criminal investigations, finding out the identity of a famous pop singer etc. that really brings the game alive. The main quest is more of a background thing. There are some combat and platforming sections, but most of the game is spent in the 2,5D semi-open world.
I'd give the first part of the game a straight 10/10, honestly. I absolutely loved it. The game is just oozing with style and atmosphere and I really liked the characters and Ann's family and her cozy apartment and everything. The main story is completely unknown to player at this point but it doesn't matter because everything else makes up for it.
Then there's the second part. It's hard to say where I'd draw the line between the first and second part, but at the very least when the final dungeon begins. The slice-of-life stuff takes a backseat and it's time to focus on the main story. Except that you still don't know what's going on. And this is where the game falls a bit flat and leaves people disappointed. The game absolutely refuses to explain anything until maybe the last hour of the game. And the story and idea behind the game is actually really good! It's a shame by the time they finally explain everything I found myself thinking "that's really cool, shame I kinda stopped caring several hours ago".
And now, don't let the term "final dungeon" fool you. It might sound like the first part of the game takes like 90% of the game's duration and then you got a bit less-than-stellar ending but no, the final dungeon takes probably 1/3 of your total playtime. It goes on for an absolute eternity. It just never ends. There's a million boss fights and endless amount of corridors and platform sequences and puzzles. Now, I personally enjoyed the fights; they were challenging but I beat every boss on first try. But if you're one of those who aren't feeling the combat of the game this will be pure torture for you. And since the game just refuses to give even tiniest breadcrumb for you to care about the story, you're just forcing yourself to go through hours of combat hoping that the end really makes it worth it.
I'd give the second part 7/10 at best, only because I enjoyed the combat. Maybe even 6, just because how disappointed the game leaves you feeling if you start thinking about how good the game could've been with better pacing.
So, the overall rating would be like 8-8,5/10, which isn't too bad. It's just a shame that the game leaves you with a bit bad taste, especially considering how much I loved the first part of the game. I obviously don't regret playing it and recommend giving it a try, at least when it's discounted. Pretty easy game to 100% too, just make sure to save your game before entering the final chapter (the game warns you about it and there's a save point right next to the entrance).
The game comes with some DLC, but honestly, it's not that interesting. Some sort of isometric minigame. A bit disappointing, I would've preferred some DLC that gives you fighting and platforming levels in the cities or something.

I can't understand any complaint in the reviews, the combat is fun, the world is interesting, there is crafting, weapon and suit ablility upgrades, the story is interesting, there is platforming, fighting game mechanics, npc dialog, note pickups, interesting characters, detective stuff, the graphics are really cool, lots of areas and populated cities to explore, side missions the list goes on and on. I would describe this game as a pixel art Stellar Blade. I wanted to try it out for a few minutes and 4 hours later I was in some underground sewer system talking to some Robotic Troll type beings and my Controller died. Love it.

I don't know how to describe this game, how ever if i had to use a word it would be Master Piece.

The story is really rich. At first i though that the story was over complicated and poorly delivered, but as I proceeded and advanced the pieces started coming together, it downed on me that it is not the kind of story to be spoon fed to you, you do have to look out, explore and interact with the entire universe to get all the clues, find and read all the text and terminals and think how every thing is related to one another, finding the links with each piece of information you encounter.

The game requires extensive and meticulous exploration, thus I understand the bad reviews are of those who instead of discovering and interacting with the environment, simply breeze through it paying no attention to details, witch is why the bad reviewers complain about the story, they did not bother to read and collect information. How ever i do acknowlegde that you do have to spam the scanning function to not miss anything, I kind of felt that i had developed HDHD and schitzophrenia looking for every clue.

The ambiance of every stage, room, and each location go perfectly with the BGM, game is graphicaly stunning with this mix of low polygon 3d with 2d pixel art.

I felt really immersed with the game, always wanting to keep playing and exploring, to the point I became really mad each time i had to drop it to go do something.

The combat is not dificult at all, so long as you keep upgrading your equipment and skill you breeze through every fight, consuming corn syrup makes you a sponge rarely loosing any fight, that being said, it was still engaging and fun combined with the platforming and stage exploration in a metroidvania style. It need to be reminded however that this game is more about story telling and exploring the universe than a combat oriented game, so the game not being needlesly hard is a plus in my opinion.

Over all i loved playing this game, i got it at a discount and after finishing the game I felt I somehow robbed the developers blind, also is hard to justify how triple AAA game developers charge so much for games that have subpar stories compared to this hidden gem of an indie game.

I wish there was a sequel or another game base on this universe, maybe through the perspective of the other test subjects or something like that.

Summarizing, game is a work of art and dedication, you can tell the developers loved making the game, absolute masterpiece, a must play game.

(ALSO DESPITE EXPLORING EVERYTHING LIKE A POSSESED DEMON SOMEHOW I'M STILL MISSING SOME OF THOSE CAT TOTEMS, HOOOOOOOW???)

This game has now become one of my favourites.
For a while I have been struggling to pick up games and complete them through but this has been a treat to play through and I have 100% the achievements.

The story is kind of a nod to the SCP world with an over arching generic story. This is by no means a bad thing, it helped me understand the plot and finish it by beating the big bad at the end.

The 3d +2.5d is beautiful + the music. I really enjoyed the exploring and interacting with NPCs and learning more about the world. The combat is side scrolling hack and slash and in my opinion was very fun and not overly complicated, I didnt spend hours being punished by bosses either. I love the characters and the cyber punk world, I just wish there was more expanded on other than notes. It feels like their should be a sequel. What I also really like is that it also has a world you explore with little quests and the fact you can talk to people bit like an RPG before going into its 2.5d hack and slash. I cant seem to find other games like this set with cyber punk aesthetic.

I did buy this game sometime ago and it sat in my library for sometime but after deciding to pick up and actually commit, I am satisfied and £ per hour of gameplay has been good. Unlike £60 games in where I sync 20 minutes and and never play it.

The only issue I have with this game is that it was not long enough and I want to play more of it.
But as they say all good things dont last forever. This was one of those short and sweet games. That I will gladly revisit in near future.